Tito Ortiz waves to fans after beating Chael Sonnen via rear naked choke in the first round during Bellator 170 at the Forum in Inglewood, CA, Saturday, January 21, 2017. This was Ortiz's last fight before retiring from the sport. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Tito Ortiz waves to fans after beating Chael Sonnen via rear naked choke in the first round during Bellator 170 at the Forum in Inglewood, CA, Saturday, January 21, 2017. This was Ortiz's last fight before retiring from the sport. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Tito Ortiz waves to fans after beating Chael Sonnen via rear naked choke in the first round during Bellator 170 at the Forum in Inglewood, CA, Saturday, January 21, 2017. This was Ortiz's last fight before retiring from the sport. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

INGLEWOOD – If this is truly the last time that Tito Ortiz will step into a Bellator cage, then he certainly went out in grand fashion.

Ortiz, 41, overcame a brief moment of trouble, but emerged victorious by submission via rear-naked choke against Chael Sonnen on Saturday at The Forum at Bellator 170.

The end of the fight and Ortiz’s career came at 2:03 of the first round.

After a contentious build-up between the two fighters, Sonnen had the first big moment as he had Ortiz in a guillotine, trying to force Ortiz to tap out.

“We knew he had that guillotine,” Ortiz said. “He never had me. It was never tight.”

Ortiz eventually gave the thumbs up to signal that he was in good shape.

Ortiz was able to roll through and mount Sonnen. He followed that with some ground and pound punches and eventually took Sonnen’s back for the submission.

This was Ortiz’s fourth fight in Bellator. He has victories over Alexander Shlemenko, Stephan Bonnar and now Sonnen.

As a symbol of this being his last fight, Ortiz told his oldest son to lay his gloves down in the middle of the cage.

“I just want to thank everybody that’s been with me from the beginning,” an emotional Ortiz told the crowd. “I came from nothing.”

On an in-arena highlight video, Brennan Ward said that Paul Daley wouldn’t make it past the second round of their co-main event fight.

Daley made sure that the second round wasn’t even needed.

Daley, who moments before had been taken down by Ward, landed a perfect flying knee that connected and sent Ward down and out in the first round.

The end of the fight came at 2:27 of the round.

Daley improved to 5-1 in Bellator. Impressively, that was Daley’s 29 knockout victory in his 39 career professional fights.

Ward remained down for several minutes while being attended to by the ringside doctors. He was eventually strapped to a stretcher. He waved his arms on the way out.

Ralek Gracie and Hisaki Kato didn’t do anything to please the crowd in their three-round middleweight fight.

The fighters were booed from the halfway point of the first round. The lack of action got so bad that, at one point, the crowd started to chant “Fight” “Fight” in an attempt to draw the fighters out of the malaise.

Eventually Kato won by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 30-27).

“The last round was a bit dangerous for me because you never want to be on the bottom against a Gracie fighter,” Kato said. “I knew I had won the first two rounds, so I just had to keep it tight and hold on for two minutes.”

The fight was the Bellator debut for Gracie.

“I think I gave him too much credit,” Gracie said.

In a battle of top featherweights, Emmanuel Sanchez emerged with a narrow majority-decision victory over Riverside’s Georgi Karakhanyan.

In the second round, Sanchez was deducted a point after striking Karakhanyan with illegal knees. Sanchez hit Karakhanyan with the illegal knees while Karakhanyan was in a grounded position.

Damian Calhoun is the Prep Sports Coordinator and writer for the Daily Breeze. He's also the soccer writer for the Southern California News Group, covering Major League Soccer and occasionally the U.S. national teams.